JERUSALEM, March 28 (UPI) -- Arab heads of state Wednesday unanimously decided to revive a peace initiative with Israel and came a long way since the Khartoum summit, shortly after the 1967 war. At that time, the Arab summit decided there would be "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it."
Now they are going to send teams around the world to sell their idea.
Egypt was the first Arab state to make peace with Israel; Jordan followed, and Saudi Arabia's then prince, now King Abdullah floated a peace initiative that the Arab League adopted, with some changes, at a summit meeting in Beirut, Lebanon, in 2002.
The proposal was made at the wrong time -- the peak of Palestinian suicide bombings, hours before an attack that killed 29 people who gathered for a Passover eve meal -- and prompted a reoccupation of the West Bank.
Now in Riyadh, the Arab leaders have renewed their offer: If Israel withdraws from all the territories it occupied since the 1967 war, agrees to a "just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem" and "accepts the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state ... in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital," then the Arab states would "consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended ... enter a peace agreement with Israel ... and establish normal relations with Israel."
The initiative coincides with a changing atmosphere in the Middle East. Now Iran, a potential nuclear power, is perceived as a greater threat to moderate Arab regimes than Israel.
Iran has been using the Israeli-Arab dispute to enhance its influence. It has backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and is arming, training and providing financial aid to the Islamic Hamas.
"More than ever, insofar as Saudi Arabia is concerned, a serious Palestinian-Israeli settlement process is a regional necessity and not a luxury," maintained international relations Professor (Emeritus) Camille Mansour, an adviser to the United Nations. Egypt, which played a leading role in Arab affairs, has been losing clout. "It has no influence over the emerging challenges and has proven incapable of preventing Palestinian clashes on its very doorstep," Mansour wrote on bitterlemons.org
Israeli Professor Alexander Bligh, who chairs the department of Israel and Middle Eastern politics at the College of Judea and Samaria, noted, "Self-assured, quiet and realistic Saudi diplomacy is precisely what Israel needs, especially at a time when ... Egypt's ability to be a broker in Israel-Arab relations has deteriorated significantly in Israeli eyes."
The Saudis succeeded in getting the main Palestinian rivals, Fatah and Hamas, to form a national unity government, and that encouraged the Saudis to move on, wrote Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian minister who is now vice president of Birzeit University in the West Bank.
The offer of peace with all 22 Arab states (except perhaps Libya, which is not attending the summit meeting), the prospect of ending all claims and having "normal relations" with the Arab countries sounds enticing. It was exactly was Israelis have hoped for all along.
Hamas may not like the idea. It still refuses to recognize Israel and renounce violence, but the program of the Palestinian Authority's national unity government does talk of establishing a Palestinian state in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, not beyond them. Hamas has changed considerably in the past year, former Minister Sufian Abu Zaida of Fatah noted in a briefing Tuesday.
It would be much more difficult for Hamas to defy an all-Arab decision to make peace with Israel than to undermine a Fatah attempt to establish relations with the Jewish state. The refugee issue seems to be the main, but not only, problem in the Arab plan.
The Arabs maintain the refugees have a "right of return" and cite U.N. resolution 194. According to that resolution, "Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so."
The Palestine Liberation Organization says there are 5.5 million refugees. If they were to return to Israel, they and the 1.4 million Israeli Arabs would be a majority, and Israel would cease being a Jewish state. According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics last year there were 5.4 million Jews in Israel.
Even if the vast majority of refugees decide not to come, and only a few hundred thousand refugees return, the arrivals would change Israel's character. That is why Israel is so dead-set against the "right of return."
That problem can be solved, suggested Hebrew University Professor (Emeritus) Moshe Maoz.
The Arab proposal says the solution to the Palestinian refugee problem should be "agreed upon" in accordance with Resolution 194. That means the matter should be negotiated. Israeli officials have thus suggested that a resettlement of refugees in the envisaged Palestinian state should be considered fulfillment of Res. 194.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert talked favorably of the initiative, at least in its original Saudi form.
At a news conference in Jerusalem Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said one of the ideas was to invite Arab countries, Israel and the Palestinians to a meeting with the Quartet of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia. However, "we need more consultation among the Quartet and countries concerned," he said.
If such an invitation arrives, "I'll definitely look at it in a very positive manner and assuming that I will get a visa, I will not hesitate to participate particularly for one major reason ... I think that the Saudi initiative is very interesting, is very challenging. And if the Arab countries, moderate Arab countries, will try to advance the process along the lines of the Saudi initiative, I will look at it as a very positive development," he said.
Olmert does not have that much clout today, and if elections were held now his party Kadima would emerge third with less than half the votes that the hawkish Likud of Binyamin Netanyahu would get.
But a favorable response to the initiative might be just the thing Olmert needs to present a new agenda for his government.
Tel Aviv University Professor Ephy Ya'ar, who conducts a regular peace index, told United Press International there is a slight plurality in favor of the initiatives and a "clear majority" for it among people who have heard of it. But Ya'ar doubted Olmert's ability to go thought with the plan. Most respondents in Ya'ar's surveys believe Olmert's government lacks a mandate to negotiate such an agreement. That is probably because Olmert is so unpopular. With a different, popular leader, support would have been greater, Ya'ar said.
